ERP 2.50:Functional Documentation/Sales Management
| Languages: |
English | Deutsch | Français | Italiano | Nederlands | Translate this article... |
Contents |
Introduction
Sales Management entitles all management of activities related to Customer Sales, such as Sales Orders, Pricing, Shipping, Invoicing and Reporting.
It is possible to link documents such as order documents, delivery notes and invoice, in any order required. If considered unnecessary, they can be disregarded.
The capacities of the EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) and the integration with PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant) provide access beyond the physical limits of a company.
Above flow is an example of the events for a Standard Sales Order with Delivery terms 'complete order' and Invoice terms 'After order delivered'.
Sales Order
A ‘Sales Order’ is a document that specifies products and/or services ordered by a specific customer, as well as the price, terms and conditions.
Document types
When a ‘Sales Order’ gets booked, different Document types can be selected to indicate the purpose of the ‘Sales Order’:
- Standard Order:
When booking this type of order, no additional action is taken. The order quantity is reserved in the warehouse until shipment takes place.
- Point of Sales Order (POS):
Upon completion of the ‘Sales Order’, the shipment takes place automatically and the invoice is created.
- Warehouse Order:
Upon completion of the ‘Sales Order’, the shipment is created automatically.
- Return Material (Refund):
This Document type is used when material is returned. The order quantities are negative to increase stock size.
- Proposal:
This Document type is used to record a potential Customer Sales Order. No stock is reserved for this type of ‘Sales Order’. MRP does not include this type of Sales Order in the calculations of the Manufacturing- and Purchase Plans.
- Quotation:
This Document type is also used to record a potential Customer Sales Order, but in this case stock is reserved also. MRP does not include this type of Sales Order in the calculations of the Manufacturing- and Purchase Plans.
- Prepay Order:
For this type of ‘Sales Order’, the invoice is sent out and has to be paid before the goods will be shipped.
Note: Please, note that complete flow for this kind of document is not fully implemented (such us next actions, statuses and so on...)
- On Credit Order:
Upon completion of the ‘Sales Order’, the system automatically creates a shipment and an invoice. The customer will receive the goods and the invoice together.
Sales Order Attribute
Document number: The ‘document number’ for the ‘Sales Order’ can be automatically generated or filled out manually if required
Order Reference: Any external reference number of the Customer can be displayed in this field for reference purposes.
Price List: Per ‘Sales Order’ a specific pricelist can be selected for the Customer that will apply to all lines on that ‘Sales Order’.
Document Status: Different statuses can be selected to indicate in what phase of the Order process the ‘Sales Order ‘ currently is. Examples of document statuses are ‘Draft’, ‘Not Accepted’, ‘Underway’, ‘Completed’, ‘Closed’, etc.
Form of Payment: Different payment methods can be selected to indicate how the invoice will be paid for. Examples of Form of Payment are ‘Bank Deposit’, ‘bank order’, ‘bank remittance’, ‘cash’, ‘credit card’, ‘cash shipment’,‘money order’, ‘promissory note’.
Payment terms: ‘Payment terms’ is defined to indicate when an Sales invoice needs to be paid. For example: immediately, once a month, every two months on the 10th of the month, etc.
Warehouse: This field indicates from which warehouse a ‘Sales Order ‘ must be shipped.
Apart from the above attributes, the Sales Order also specifies many other attributes, for example:
- what goods need to be shipped
- the name of the customer
- ordered quantity
- prices of the goods
- date when the order was booked
- when they need to be shipped
- where it needs to ship to
- what tax needs to be applied
The ‘Sales Order’ indicates the ‘Summed Line Amount’(the sum of the amounts on the Sales Order without taxes being added) and the ‘Grand Total Amount’ (the sum of the amounts on the Sales Order including taxes)
Invoice Terms
The ‘Invoice Terms’ indicate when payment needs to take place for a ‘Sales Order’.
Different ‘Invoice Terms’ are:
- After order delivered:
- After delivery
- Customer Schedule After Delivery
- Do not invoice
- Immediate
After order delivered
In this case the customer wants to be invoiced after all lines on the sales order have been delivered. For example, if the customer has ordered 10 units of product A and 5 units of product B, after delivering product A, the customer does not receive an invoice. Only after product B has been delivered, an invoice will be sent.
After delivery
In this case the customer will be invoiced for the goods that have been delivered. For example, if the customer has ordered 10 units of product A and 7 units were delivered, an invoice for 7 units of product A will be created and sent to the customer. The invoice for the remaining 3 units will be created and sent, after shipment takes place of those 3 units.
Customer Schedule After Delivery
This invoice term is the most commonly used one. Instead of sending out invoices each time a sales order line or complete sales order gets delivered, in this case one invoice is created that is combining the different deliveries for a certain customer.
- One of the possible grouping of invoices can be done based on a timeframe.
The timeframe that will be taken into consideration can be daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly, etc.
- Another possible grouping of invoices can be based on a project.
For example if a customer has received delivery of sales order a, b and c for project X and delivery of sales order d and e for project Y, one invoice for project X (listing sales order a, b and c) and one invoice for project Y (listing sales order d and e) will be generated for that customer.
Do not invoice
This invoice term is used for very important customers. The implication is that no invoice gets sent out until the customer give you the go ahead. For example the customer ordered different products and all the products have been delivered to the customer already, yet no invoice gets sent until the customer tells you that it is okay to do so.
Immediate
When the invoice term is Immediate, the invoice for the Sales Order gets created instantly, regardless of whether any shipment of ordered products took place or not.
Delivery Terms
The ‘Delivery Terms’ indicate when a Sales Order should be delivered:
- After receipt
- Availability
- Complete line
- Complete Order
Goods Shipment
A ‘Goods Shipment’ to the customer can be generated either manually or automatically. The automatic method can generate ‘Goods Shipments’ based on a ‘Sales Order’ or a ‘Sales Invoice’.
A ‘Goods Shipment’ can be generated for one or more ‘Sales Orders’ or for all ‘Sales Orders’ that are pending to be shipped. The number of shipments that get generated per ‘Sales Order’ will vary depending on the ‘Delivery Terms’.
Before a ‘Goods Shipment’ is processed, the system checks the credit limit of the customer and gives a warning if the credit limit is exceeded. However, we can make a decision to ship the goods to the customer regardless.
The ‘Goods Shipment’ indicate an ‘Accounting Date’, indicating what date to be used in ‘General Ledger’ account entries that get generated because of the shipment.
Shipping Companies
For the delivery of materials, depending on the route, one or many ‘Shipping Companies’ may be chosen. The ‘Shipping Companies’ will be registered in the system and when creating a goods shipment, the system can select the best ‘Shipping Company’ or it can be selected manually.
Sales Invoice
A ‘Sales Invoice’ is an itemized statement or written account of goods sold to a customer by a company. It indicates the quantity and price of each product or service included in the ‘Sales Order’.
The ‘Sales Invoice’ contains a lot of information, for example:
- Invoice number
- corresponding Sales Order information
- corresponding Goods Shipment information
- the product(s) on the invoice
- the name of the customer
- how many product(s) are being invoiced
- prices of the goods
- tax amount (generated automatically)
- invoice amount
‘Sales Invoices’ can be generated for one or more ‘Sales Orders’ or for all ‘Sales Orders’ that are pending to be invoiced.
‘Sales Invoices’ can be grouped by ‘customer’, ‘project’, ‘location’, etc. with the advantage that the affected parties receive the invoices consolidated.
With the payment monitor it is possible to track the payment status of the invoice and get valuable information such as the outstanding amount and the days pending till the next due date.
Sales "Financial" Invoices
For those cases when a sales invoice do not related to a product, good or service but to a "G/L account" needs to be entered and posted in the system, there is a flag called "Financial Invoice Line" in the Sales Invoice Line, end-user can set as "yes" in order to enter a "G/L Item" linked to a "G/L Account" instead of a Product, Good or Service.
G/L items above mentioned, can be created as rest of G/L items but need to be set up as "Enable in Financial Invoices" which means that just those G/L items will be linked to a "Tax Category" and therefore shown in a sales line like a product.
Payment and Payment monitor
The ‘Payment’ is automatically generated when the ‘Sales Invoice’ gets completed. The ‘Payment’ contains the payment and invoice terms information and the amount of the invoice. This way, Accounting is updated automatically.
Payment monitor allows to track the invoice payment status. In this section it is possible to know whether invoice is fully paid or not. If not then how much has been receipt, how much is pending, when is the next payment due date and the amount that is expected to be received on that date. The status can be updated automatically by a background process or manually for each invoice. The date when payment status was last time calculated is displayed in the form. Filter Pop-up window allows to filter invoices based on fully paid or not criteria (display all option is also available).
Price Applications
Price Lists
The ‘Price List’ contains products with their prices, currencies and tax treatment. The prices on the ‘Price List’ may include discounts. Only one ‘Pricelist’ can be assigned to a customer. A different version of the ‘Pricelist’ may be created for a certain date range, for example for special events or seasonal sales.
All products have three prices:
- List price: the Catalog sales price of a product
- Standard price: Company´s sales price
- Price Limit: the lowest possible price a product may be sold for
Commissions
‘Commissions’ set up accommodates defining how and when commissions will be calculated and whom to pay to. It is possible to pay multiple commissions for the same ‘Sales Order’ or ‘Sales Invoice’, for example for different people. The commission is applied for a certain business partner and for the period of time defined. After defining the commission, a new invoice is generated for ‘Accounting Ledger’. A selection criteria can be defined for the commission, to apply the commission for specific Business Partners or specific Products.
Volume Discounts
‘Volume discounts’ can be configured for when a customer reaches a certain sales volume. The ‘Volume discounts’ is setup for certain product categories and is defined for certain customers. ‘Volume discounts’ can be scaled, so that each range of amounts has a different discount. Only during the defined time period the ‘Volume discounts’ will be applied. A ‘Payment Method’ can be selected.
Price Adjustments
‘Price adjustments’ are special prices for any reason and are applied automatically when a new ‘Sales Order’ gets booked. Different ‘Price adjustments’ can be configured for ‘business partners’, ‘products’, ‘partner groups’ and ‘product categories’ and are valid during a certain time period.
User Story
- Mike has just sold 100 pens, 30 notebooks and 30 bags.
- Using Openbravo, Mike creates a Sales Order, stating what he sold. He submits the Sales Order to his boss for recording purposes.
- Soon after the Sales Order was created, the shipment is sent to the customer by the Warehouse. Mike creates a Goods Shipment to document what exactly was shipped to the customer.
- The completion of the Goods Shipment updates the inventory (Warehouse Management).
- Mike also creates a Sales Invoice for the sold products. Upon completion of the Sales Invoice a Payment gets generated to alert accounting that the customer needs to pay us for the delivered products (Financial Management).
- When all products have been delivered to the customer, Mike closes the Sales Order.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
CRM consists of Methodologies, Software and Internet capabilities that help a company manage relationships in an organized way.
CRM consists of:
- Helping the marketing department to Identify and target the best customers, manage marketing campaigns with clear goals and objectives, and generate quality leads for the sales team.
- Allowing the formation of individualized relationships with customers, with the aim of improving customer satisfaction and maximizing profits. Identify the most profitable customers and providing them the highest level of service.
- Providing employees with the information and processes necessary to know their customers, understand their needs and effectively build relationships between the company, its customer base and distribution partners.
An example of CRM is that when creating a new Sales Order, users are informed with the available information regarding previous order behaviour. Other useful information includes credit status, order amounts for a certain period, complaints, etc.
Requests, such as account inquiry, warranty issue, etc., can be stored in the system, used for processing and categorizing. A historical list with when, why and what action was taken is kept for reference purposes.
Business Intelligence (BI)
Business Intelligence (BI) consists of a broad category of applications and technologies for gathering, storing, analysing and providing access to data to help users make better business decisions.
BI applications include the activities of decision support systems, query and reporting, statistical analysis, forecasting and data mining.
The configuration of most reports is multidimensional. The user can select which type of information to use, in order to group and filter results.
Also, a comparative analysis can be made, for example looking at a sales trend over a length of time (e.g. one year) or the same period in previous years.
The reports can be displayed in HTML or PDF format.
The main reports are:
Sales Dimensional Report
This report shows total Sales amount. The report can be run with parameters to show to which customer is being sold to most frequently and what product(s), over a specific period of time.
Parameters for this report are dates, ‘Organization’ and the possibility to run a comparative report.
Shipments Dimensional Report
Similar to the ‘Sales Dimensional Report’, but related to ‘Goods Shipments’.
Sales Invoice Dimensional Report
Similar to the ‘Sales Dimensional Report’, but related to ‘Sales Invoices’.
Sales Report by Partner and Product
List of Partners and pie charts of their product purchases.